City almost furtive on Willis issue

A meeting was held Tuesday night at City Hall to discuss the status of the Henry Lee Willis Community Center, which lost all its state funding, and as a result will close by Feb. 6.

Among those at the meeting were Mayor Joe Petty and City Councilor Sarai Rivera. Marilyn Chase, assistant secretary of the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, as well as several members of the area’s state legislative delegation were in attendance.

We were also told that members of the clergy, the NAACP, and the heads of the approximately 10 agencies operated by the Willis Center were on hand.

Mayor Petty said he organized the meeting as a closed-door session to get information on how the services once offered by the Willis Center would be continued without any major disruptions.

But given the many questions raised by the demise of the minority-led, social service agency and the angst it has caused in the African-American community, which has benefited from the agency’s professional growth opportunities to minorities interested in health and human services, you would think that such a meeting would have been advertised beforehand and open to the public.

The fact that some 50 people, after hearing about the meeting through word of mouth, turned up and were reluctantly allowed to stay, doesn’t lessen the incredibility of the mayor initially trying to close the meeting to the public.

But perhaps this should not come as a surprise, as this entire process has been characterized by a mind-boggling lack of transparency and accountability.

City Councilor Konnie Lukes, who chairs the council’s Public Health and Human Services Committee, was not aware of Tuesday’s meeting until it was over. And when she raised questions later on the City Council floor, questions that were supposedly answered in the meeting on the Willis Center, she was met with silence.

Yesterday, she filed several orders, to include seeking a legal opinion on whether the meeting was in compliance with the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.

She is also requesting the administration “report the dates, persons in attendance, and locations of any meetings held to discuss the services, operations and transfers of contracts and assets of the Henry Lee Willis Center.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, according to Carlton Watson, executive director of the Willis Center, the state disclosed the names of some of the agencies that will be taking over Willis’ programs, and presumably the properties housing those programs.

But beyond saying it has major concerns about client care and the financial state of the Willis Center, the state still has not provided any specific details as to why it has withdrawn its funding.

This is an essential point.

Our representatives may not have been able to prevent the state from doing what it wanted to do, but at the very least they should have insisted on being provided a more convincing argument for dissolving the 22-year-old social service agency. They should have insisted on being given the opportunity to peruse other operational or management options, and there should have been a public debate on this issue.

Indeed, if it is true that Mr. Watson, members of the area’s state delegation and members of the City Council have not been told anything beyond the state’s general note of concern, then the closing of the Willis Center reflects a total dereliction of duty by the Willis’ board of directors, and our political representatives.